OpenAI has named former xAI executive Uday Ruddarraju to lead its infrastructure and compute businesses, marking the latest leadership shakeup for its teams focused on expanding data center capacity. Ruddarraju joined OpenAI last year and was appointed as chief technology officer for compute in July. Sachin Katti, who had been overseeing the infrastructure unit, will transition out of his role over the next few weeks and plans to remain as an adviser after that.
OpenAI's Sam Altman has said the ChatGPT maker will likely spend trillions of dollars on the physical infrastructure needed to develop new AI models and support wider adoption of the technology. In recent months, the teams charged with sourcing, financing and setting up data center capacity have seen some key departures.
Chris Malone, an executive helping oversee the data center build-out, left OpenAI in August. Peter Hoeschele, who played a critical role in OpenAI's high-profile Stargate infrastructure initiative, exited for Meta Platforms Inc. earlier this year, along with two other colleagues.
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In an interview, Ruddarraju said he expects the latest leadership change to go smoothly given his prior role working with the engineering, construction and technical parts of the infrastructure group. He has also worked with leaders at OpenAI's partners, including Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang. The strategy and business leaders under Katti will also remain in their roles, providing stability, he said.
"Sachin has done an incredible job maintaining the commercial partnerships," he said. Now "I have to spend more time on the commercial side."
Katti joined OpenAI about a year ago and has overseen several large data center efforts, including an 8-gigawatt project in Ohio with SB Energy and Nvidia, as well as a Georgia site that's the first to be designed and led by OpenAI.
"I'm proud of what we've built and have total confidence in Uday and the team to carry it forward," Katti said in a statement. "I'm looking forward to building something new."
Katti previously served as the chief technology and AI officer at Intel Corp. before joining OpenAI. He also co-founded two companies while working as a professor at Stanford.
Katti had spent far more of his career as an academic rather than an operating executive. The longtime Stanford professor joked in a March interview that he didn't have a real job until he started working at Intel almost five years ago.
Since July, Katti had been overseeing an effort called GPT-Infra to use OpenAI models for tasks such as building semiconductors and infrastructure. Katti recently said the company has customers trying OpenAI models to develop central processing units and edge chips.
The GPT-Infra work will now fall under the company's chip chief, Richard Ho.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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